Eighteen months ago at Quail Hollow, Jon Rahm was asked about his major results since joining LIV Golf. With the PGA Championship still underway, he said his performances had “nothing to do with where I was playing golf.” Since then, he has finished second at another PGA Championship, left LIV Golf and won in Abu Dhabi. On Tuesday in Dubai, he faced the same question again.

The Spaniard answered: “We’ve got to stop blaming LIV for me playing poorly at the majors. I know what you are all trying to insinuate. It’s not because of LIV. It’s my own. Because I did have a chance to win the PGA the last two years we played it, right. It’s my own doing and my own, let’s say, golf swing problems.”

Few players have changed direction as publicly. After the breakaway league launched in 2022, Rahm talked of his “fealty” to the PGA Tour and said he didn’t need the money. In December 2023, he reversed course, signing a reported $350 million deal and announcing the move in a LIV letterman jacket, according to Golf Digest.

He left as a star. He had won the 2021 U.S. Open and the 2023 Masters, and posted 12 top-10 finishes in majors before the switch.

The numbers back up his point about the swing. Tennis World USA judged that in 11 majors since the move, Rahm had only really been in contention at the 2025 and 2026 PGA Championships. His four top-10s were seventh at the 2024 Open, eighth at the 2025 PGA, seventh at the 2025 U.S. Open, and second this year at Aronimink. He did not win anywhere in 2025.

This year the other three majors were poor. He tied for 38th at the Masters, missed the cut at the U.S. Open, and tied for 46th at The Open.

The Masters was the clearest example. He arrived as a favorite and said a three-month break at the end of 2025 had fixed a problem in his takeaway. He opened with a birdie-less 78, hit 20 range balls out of “frustration” and called the round an “anomaly.”

In Dubai, Jon Rahm gave a fuller explanation: “I think it’s easier at regular events to maybe compensate for some things that we’re doing wrong technique-wise. And when the pressure is at its biggest and the stage is the largest is when those mistakes will be accentuated and that’s a little bit what happened.”

He also rejected rust as a cause for last week: “To be honest, if anything, it’s more of an excuse than anything else.”

Two months earlier he had finished last in the field at the BMW PGA Championship after rounds of 78 and 77, the worst finish of his career. In Abu Dhabi, he won by two over Tyrrell Hatton at 23 under. A 184-yard six-iron to two feet at the 15th helped protect his lead. It was his first win outside LIV since the 2023 Masters and took him from outside the top 50 to sixth in the Race to Dubai.

The timing was personal. His fourth child was born in October, and he was home for the first few weeks. “Everybody was healthy and happy at home, and just makes it a lot easier for me to come and play,” he said.

Eugenio Chacarra leads Rory McIlroy by 533.93 points. Rahm, sixth, needs to win, and Betsperts says he also needs Chacarra to finish ninth or worse and McIlroy and Reed to finish outside the top two. 

“Yeah, coming in with a little extra incentive,” he said. “I really didn’t think even winning last week I was going to have a chance to possibly win The Race to Dubai at all.”

He has done it before. In 2019 he needed to win this event to take the title, and said “birdieing the last when I needed to to win it all was very, very special.” He has won the tournament three times, a total he shares with McIlroy and Fitzpatrick, and in his first four visits his worst finish was a tie for fourth.

On team golf, Jon Rahm said: “There’s very few sports here in this world that don’t have a World Cup, and golf is one of them.” He added: “So if there was a way to do such a thing, I think I would welcome it. It would be a lot of fun.”

His own test is simpler. If the swing work holds, April’s Masters will show it. Until then, Rahm’s answer is that any improvement belongs to him, not the league.